Wednesday, March 24, 2010

The LIGHTS That Got IN: unenlightening experiences in the world of high strangeness.

Don't ask me why I picked these incidents to write about today; it's just another mystery of the Universe. They all involve light behaving strangely, but that's about all that I can say about them--I certainly can't explain them. The only thing that I am even the slightest bit confident in saying is that they probably don't all come from the same source. Still..... Let's begin with the most well-attested-to weird light experience that I have in my files: the Toledo Donuts.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The Toledo Donuts occurred outside of the Oregon town of Toledo in a rural setting near Pioneer Mountain. The dates were the month of March 1966. There had been several UFO sightings in the area. Before the flap was over, at least 25 people had seen some aerial oddity or they had seen "The Lights". Exactly when the events began at the Reeves home is a bit unclear [at least to me] but my little stack of resources seem to say this: the daughter of the house was walking home with friends when they saw a reddish glow in the field. On closer approach, it seemed to be a domed shaped something with boiling smoke around it. Going on further, they saw another object shaped like a flashlight. The daughter threw a rock at it. A bunch of big lights suddenly turned on in the air and scared the girls home. Some morning later, Mrs. Reeves was awakened by a rosy glow in the bedroom and a high-pitched hum. She turned to look out the bedroom door and saw a watermelon-sized red "cloud" hanging in the air. It then just disappeared. Following that, the family was treated, on several nights over the next few weeks, to pulsing donut-shaped lights which crawled all over the interior walls of the house. Despite the family trying to end this "invasion" of uncanny visitors by blocking out all the windows, they still manifested on the walls. The light-spots were from 1 to 30 inches in diameter and would just manifest and suddenly go out. Others saw the lights. One neighbor saw small, round disk-shaped lights flying outside in the apple orchard. Another, deliberately camping out on the family's request, saw a blue spot manifest on one end wall, and another similar spot on the other end of the house, as if some beam had penetrated clear through. No source could be located for the beam [if it was one] and no evidence could be seen inside the house that a beam was passing through. The deputy sheriff was one of seven witnesses to this oddity, and it was he who ultimately looked up and spotted an orange object maneuvering high above. With a high-pitched whine, the object disappeared. The details of the case were sent to Dr. J.B.Rhine, the world-famous parapsychologist at Duke, but he was as perplexed as anyone. He remarked that there are often light manifestations in poltergeist cases, but those are described from European cases and not American ones. [We also know from previous posts that the European light phenomena do not manifest in this exact way anyway]. The Toledo case remains a wild and wooly mystery. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------But it's not completely alone. John Timmerman interviewed a husband and wife living on a farm near Heath, Ohio. In 1981, they had a close encounter with something very strange. Something had awakened all the dogs and they could hear, just outside, people talking in what seemed to be a foreign language. They were afraid to look outside and the sounds ultimately subsided. In the morning, they found long twelve-inch "scratches" on the ground as if someone had made them walking. The trail led all the way to the fence line and then seemed to pass through the fence rather than showing signs of climbing over it. Then, sometime later, but connected [rightly or wrongly] in their minds, came the lights. These were perfectly white, round spots on the bedroom walls at night. "At night when the lights was out, you could see it. It would come in and go clear around this room and sometimes stay there....and it was perfectly round and it would start here and go clear around that wall. And it bugged me so much, it about drove me crazy. I put the blinds, the curtains, so that this light could not come in. But it did anyway, believe it....This happened probably about a month straight, I suppose this happened...no matter where I put them curtains and how I pulled them, we still had that light going around that room....Well, it stayed there maybe until morning, or if the light came in the room you couldn't see it....It moved around as though someone was looking the whole room over." John asked them how they slept. "Not too well, believe it".-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------There are two more cases of lightspots on the walls in my files, both from 1962 and both from California [Anaheim and Azusa]. In both cases the lights were about 1 to 1 1/2 inches in diameter.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The light phenomenon which is pictured [poorly by me] in the illustration accompanying this section, refers to a 1997 case from Bloomington, Illinois wherein the couple saw a multicolored "orb" appear on their kitchen wall. The thing was about 2 to 3 inches in diameter and seemed to bob as it cruised 3 feet high across the floor. as it came near them, it suddenly expanded to about five inches in diameter. All the time it oscillated in colors throughout the spectrum. When it reached the oven, it merely disappeared without a noise. I include this experience here because it seems to have some small similarity to the wallspots and seemed flat to the wall to begin with. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Another marginally similar event occurred in Brussels, Belgium in 1970. Here a man was walking in the evening when he saw a patch of light on the ground ahead of him. This was big, about 7 to 8 meters in diameter. As he approached it began to vibrate and became phosphorescent green. It then assumed a shape like a bell, 5 meters high. "the inside seemed formed of thousands of tiny luminous particles which moved agitatedly in all directions, giving the impression of great nervousness." The thing, without noise, odor or heat, moved away across the ground and disappeared behind a mound. Can patches of light sense the presence of humans? We're Out Proctor now.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------There are cases where beams mysteriously enter bedrooms for no apparent reason. The drawing on the lower left represents a case from Traunstein, Austria in 1975. Here a beam seemed to pass through the window of a 75 year-old lady who was trying to get to sleep [the beam didn't help]. "It was a ray; bright as burning magnesium, crossing my room like a line....it was eerie--a sharp outlined stripe, flat....There was no sound, not even a crackle...it shot in and went as far as the kitchen, perhaps to the door of our flat--and back out". It did not illuminate the room. It seemed to come in, fast but gradually, and be pulled back out. It seemed to be "flat", a la two dimensional or at least extremely thin. The path seemed to curve downwards slightly as it crossed the room. Yep, an everyday event in Austria.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------In 1956, in Waipukurau, New Zealand a 58 year-old farmer was up at 2am due to some cramping muscles. He got to walking in hopes of working them out. Over his shoulder came a beam of light, hitting his mirror. Turning, he saw a beam of bluish-silver colored light coming down at an angle into his room. It was a round "pipe" in cross-section, and was composed of light so dense that he could see nothing through it. But it did not illuminate the room. The farmer stared directly into the light which seemed so intense, but it did not negatively affect his eyes at all. [reminds me of the people who see the "spinning Suns"]. He stepped towards his window, and the beam switched right off. In its place was a distant object of the same distinctive blue color. One more step and it too went off.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The other illustration above is for the 1972 Logrono, Spain case. Here a BOL entered the bedroom of a student of theology at a college in NE Spain. His tape recorder had been playing music but the station had gone off the air. This didn't deter a Ball-of-Light from entering his room and heading for the recorder. This thing was very bright and football-shaped; a smoothly luminous form. Once opposite the recorder's night table, it extended a "solid" beam of light into the cassette slot of the machine [or at least thereabouts---our theology student was trying to creep as deeply under the covers as he could]. The BOL then ascended and went directly out of the window. It is not stated how the student worked this phenomenon into his theology.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------There are, of course, a nearly unlimited number of cases of BOLs. I've picked out a few which seemed to "materialize" inside the structure of a building,[or some aspect of their "act" did] rather than to "fly in". In the late 19th century, apparently in a small town in New Hampshire [the correspondent to the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research wasn't very specific on this] two members of a farm family were going to bed when they noticed a light in the kitchen which they thought was a fire on the stove. The child went to bed while the mother investigated. She found a patch of light moving on the wall, gradually growing from a nail's-head size to the diameter of a dinnerplate. It then "flashed" all over the room. [apparently then just simply disappearing]. The next night, despite taking precautions of blocking up the windows with the curtains, the light materialized again in three different appearances, racing about the walls. The family members interpreted this as a warning of an impending death in the family, which subsequently occurred. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The illustration with this section [again, caveat emptor, this was done by me, and so is not to be taken overly seriously] refers to an incident in Gloggnitz, Austria in 1977. Here a 19 year-old radio mechanic was lying in bed when the room was "invaded" by a 50cm hollow ball composed of "electric red" bars. This thing hovered and slowly moved towards his door. Jumping up, he accidentally bumped the thing with his leg. It then dimmed and the bars shrank in diameter. They gradually went to nothing and the thing was gone. There was no noise, no heat, no physiological sensation at all. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------In 1968, in Miami, Florida, two people were going to bed when something came right through the solid [and closed] front door to settled in the air at their feet. It was a soccerball-sized ball of light. It then went up to the ceiling and over their heads. Staying tight to the ceiling, the thing broke into five equal pieces, which danced and cavorted about. [one wonders if I should say "Pixies" instead of "Pieces"?] "They were bright white and emitted no light." One object moved away from the others as if on an exploration of the room. "It cast no shadow on anything or lit anything..." The male got up and approached the light which was dancing on the wall. He tried unsuccessfully to see into it. Then he tried to touch it. At this point the "explorer light" shot up to the ceiling and proceeded to lead the other four in a line back out the door. Going outside, the couple saw their visitors dancing above their rooftop, finally coalescing into one, and zig-zagging away at great speed. Although the guy kept this event in memory, the girl did not. She only recalled it years later when they were outside watching meteors and re-told the encounter.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------In 2003, the distressingly-named Booger Bottom, Georgia was witness to another "light mystery". Here three adults were driving in an SUV when a "red swirling object" appeared outside. Suddenly "50" red silver-dollar-sized globes manifested inside the vehicle. The lights seemed "curious" to them, as if "scanning" them. Then they just left, leaving the witnesses with the impression that they had an encounter with intelligences of some kind. The woman was quite concerned that, whatever they were, they might come back and "cart us off". -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The only thing that correlates all this stuff to me is "Light Behaving Badly". What that leads to, I can't say [though it's fun to guess]. There seems to be some playing about with "dimensionality" [i.e. how many dimensions are these things going to bother to use in their manifestations?] And/or there is playing around with space, as in winking out of it or passing right through other things in it. Whether the lights have a relationship to any actual "substance" at all is not obvious in any of these cases. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------A possibly germane thing occurred in 1975 in Annadale, New York. Here two [unfortunately for credibility] 15 year-old boys saw an orange football-shaped object some distance away. They watched for ten minutes. The light began to collapse, very slowly, in upon itself. Without any noise or notable sensation, the "big football" became a "basketball" and kept folding in, getting smaller and smaller until it disappeared. NICAP investigation felt that the boys were trustworthy and somewhat shook up by their experience, and some charred vegetation and sheared tree limbs were found at the scene---the boys had mentioned, and knew of, none of that. Was this a light form removing itself from our space? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------And, probably not germane, but reminiscent [somewhat] of our Midnight in Finland incident, there was a 1962 encounter in Campbell, Ohio. Here two adults were in the lady's driveway getting ready for a trip at night, when they saw two glowing balls of light directly ahead of them. {just over the house in line of sight}. The things cleared the tree-line with a zig-zag motion and a pulsing orange glow. They seemed to be connected to one another by a deep-red bar. The son and his mother got out of their car to watch. The things flew directly over their heads. While overhead, the middle bar seemed to disappear and the sphere on the left changed from orange to bright silver. [like a mirror]. It radiated light like "falling glowing snowflakes". This glowing lasted from 3 to 5 seconds, whereupon the silver mirror turned back into orange and the "snowflakes" seemed to flow back into the sphere. [this flake like falling is what reminded me a bit of the Finland incident]. there was no sound nor heat throughout the experience. This experience was sent in a letter to Jim McDonald, but I don't know if he followed it up.So there we are: misbehaving lights. Your guess as to what was behind them is as good as anyone's. Still, they as a group have a vague intuition of trying to form some kind of pattern to me. This post's been a long one, and if too long I apologize--but you see what happens when I have my files around. Now it's back to WVA and no files--so we'll do the best we can from there.

20 comments:

Interesting stuff. A hypothesis: these are living forms with no apparent biology present in their make-up. As the 'perfect machine' has no moving parts, perhaps an expression of our human biological evolution will be light bodies. The observation that some BOLs were intelligent is intriguing.

Well, that is one idea which I won't discard. I don't know why, but my "druthers" lean to a). folkloric "fairy-ball" like manifestations, or b). some distant ET characters experimenting with an exploration technology that they don't have much of a handle on yet. [i.e. my "intrusions" hypothesis]. I will be the first to admit, though, that when I'm imagining away like this, I am utterly Out Proctor.

These small things are also much like the larger 'ufos' so often reported. My reading is leading me to believe that such things are some kind of plasma, for want of a better word. Cold and erratic, but sometimes responding to the presence of a person, so they appear 'intelligent'. Could be reacting to motion, air pressure disturbance from a witness, body heat or even the small amount of electricity in them. Science is looking into these sorts of things, but from the other end. By trying to create such energy forms in the lab, partly for industrial purposes, we will probably solve the mystery in much the same way we now understand more about lightning. Maybe some of Persinger's work bears on these things too. I've seen the Earth lights at some length and they are very similar, if not the same thing as these.

I agree that some of this pile of BOL oddities are going to turn out to be non-intelligent phenomena coughed up by the planet [I think that I mentioned that in a post far back in the blog somewhere]. But some of the incidents seem to defy ordinary physics. The lights-on-the-walls are some of those. They seem to be "spots" of light, but not "balls of light". In that they don't seem at all to manifest like would plasma which seems to expand three-dimensionally into generally spherical forms, in apparent obedience to 1/r-squared laws. Also, some BOL cases engage in motions wherein the BOLs [multiple] don't "twin" in their motions, which one would expect a law-abiding natural phenomenon to do. And one could go on for other specific events. So, although I am quite ready to accept a great number of Earth plasmas in the files, there seem to me to be quite a few which don't seem to be that at all.

As a child I saw a soccer-size ball of light bouncing across a pasture. It separated into many firefly-size lights, then gathered again and bounced off. I often wonder if it was a group mind of fireflies.

Strange (and varied) light phenomena are also regularly observed, and in recent years more frequently photographed and/or videotaped, in conjunction with the crop circles. And then there is the case of Robbert van den Broeke, a young Dutchman who not only occasionally sees some of this light phenomena in situations which seem to indicate direct relationship to the creation of new circles, he also has produced thousands of photographs for more than 10 years of UNSEEN and enormously varied "unenlightening" light--using a wide range of cameras belonging to many different people, in many different locations and while in the company of the camera-owners--with everyone present able to see the strange light effects on the digital cameras' LED screens immediately afterward, but with no one present (in most of these cases including Robbert himself) being aware of these lights visually.

Some of these strange "light" photos are included in this 5-part report:http://www.bltresearch.com/robbert/photoanoms1.php.

Various eyewitness accounts of crop circles forming, often in conjunction with the presence of one or another peculiar "light" event, are listed at the bottom of our "Introduction" to Robbert's case:http://www.bltresearch.com/robbert.php.

In some of these documented incidents the idea that a plasma of some kind might be the answer seems reasonable; in others this explanation is, I am certain, inappropriate. Whatever it is that is going on, it is VERY strange.

To Yinarchy: fascinating experience, thank you. ---- To all, re: Nancy Talbott's references--usually I don't like to publicize websites, but BLT has done interesting, if controversial, work and I believe Nancy Talbott to be an honest explorer of the anomalistic, and so everyone should do their own looking into things like the BLT research and make up their own minds.

This sort of thing's been almost normal for me from infancy right to the present day: I blithely trotted out stories about these critters as a kid until a stranger shook me like a rag doll while repeatedly belting me across the face screeching, "You stupid little boy, you never saw any such thing!" making me wonder: if I didn't see them, why is she getting so upset?

The ones where people keep trying to block out the lights, remind me of times during my supposedly rational 20s when, just as I'd thought I'd finally identified the hole(s) in the curtain/the wall/the floor/the ceiling where the light HAD to be getting in and started to relax, I'd suddenly notice it now seemed to be coming in from somewhere else. (I also, particularly as kid've been prone to sonic equivalents of these things).

The Belgian 'green bell' composed of thousands of tiny agitated glowing particles reminds me of my Giant Orange Blob Monster, of three years back, a huge sizzling American football shaped thing composed of all these smaller shifting orange 'entities' which became darker the further you moved away from its centre. Though it didn't have a face, it seemed to emit this sort of malicious grin at me, somehow conveying the idea the darkness of the 'spheres' was due feeding on negative energy drawn off others which it'd tried to inject in me, but I'd somehow demonstrated an ability to resist it - before it vanished!

You're possibly right about a connection between the multicoloured ORB and the 2D lights: from the Millennium to the present one of the spookiest light effects I've been exposed to're what I call the Black & White Tadpoles: they're about the size of golf balls, though the 'babies' can be smaller, and some can be medicine ball sized; they glow as if surrounded by an aura or made of solid energy - even the black ones! - yet throw no shadows, and often have these peculiar wriggling little tails similar to those cartoonists draw for the lower half of ghosts. I find them incredibly cute - possibly because of the ecstasy they induced in me whenever they appeared to me as a kid - but as an adult I also find them incredibly spooky, something only reinforced in me in later years by encounters which seem straight out of traditional accounts of attacks by demons.

The pulsing glowing orange balls radiating light in the form of snowflakes remind me of the numerous beach ball sized white glowing 3D 'dandelion' entities surrounded by soft glowing pastel orange spheres me and a friend called Stephen Lyons and a bemused dinner lady witnessed when I was six at Vine Street (Mixed) Infants, (some really seriously weird sh*t happened to me at that place - I mean SERIOUSLY!).

The Miami soccerball-sized ball of light which split into five pieces reminds me of the electrically blue tinged solid white energy entities I call Abstract (or Geometric) Angels - which I see most Januaries at least once, since the turn of the Millennium - which, while 2D, nevertheless pull that breaking into multiple smaller shapes trick.

The Gloggnitz electric red barred hollow sphere sounds and looks an absolute doozie - don't underestimate your own talent - I'd LOVE to see one. The nearest I've come to it was last year's row of three, electric red, diamond shaped eyes, which seemed to take a good look up and down at me - even to the point of blinking! - before returning to whichever Universe it'd 'blinked' in from.

I keep speaking of these things as entities but that's how they behave and even, at times, interact with me; but one thing they definitely leave with is the distinct impression, not only don't they all come from here, but many of them come from other planets, other Universes - whole other plains of existence.

All such personal experiences are fascinating. As long as you don't begin telling us that you've gotten the Truth and are setting up your own religion, we'll honor your narratives as friendly maybes and with open minds.

Reminds me of what was caught on over-night cameras, in a backyard, in Stephensvelle TX a couple of years ago during their ufo flap(which included animal mutilations and c.e. experiencers reporting 'missing time').http://www.realufos.net/2008/04/ufo-light-beam.html

Also another blogger (can't remember who as I visit so many) has an entry somewhere about a rash of reports involving beams of light following people (as in shining down on them, suggesting intelligence behind the lights).

I don't know about Mutes and Missing Time during the Stephenville flap, and those don't necessarily relate to the post anyway, but I do know the best researcher on the Stephenville flap and, Robert, if you read this and want to enlighten us as to whether you've heard of these "beams-of-light" incidents [somehow I doubt that there were a "rash" of them] then maybe we can get clear as to the likelihood that such happened there.

^ As I posted, reports of the beams of light shining down on people have been reported recently (I believe the occurences are not limited to one area, but could be wrong). I'm trying to find the blog I read it on -- read many blogs at at time.

In my previous post I did not claim that a "rash" of anomalous light beams occured in the Stephensville area. I don't know why you would misconstrue that I did.

The link I provided of Margie Galvez in Brownwood, located near Stephensville, showed a beam of light shining down in her backyard. She also discussed missing animals and other anomalous events. She put up the night camera to catch activity.

I recently finished reading Connections by Beth Collings and Anna Jamerson (first publically known through Corty Bryan's 'Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind: Alien Abduction, U.F.O.s and the Conference at M.I.T.'). In Connections, Collings reports a ball of light that comes through her window then deposits or pours itself into a humanoid form of what looked like a flesh and blood, tall man (human). This was followed by a classic abduction. Another of many examples of "lights that got in". High strangeness galore.....

Hmm....my response to you did not publish. Well, here's some recent beam of light reports. As I attempted to answered you earlier - I didn't claim there were a "rash" of beams of light in Stephensville , though at least one fascinating report and video was an anomalous beam (the link I provided in my initial post).

The beams of light reminds me of watching old Rod Serling's "Twilight Zone", where you saw the things out of this world that you knew would "never" happen...

I myself was witness to an orb in June of 1979 on the road between Kingman and Wickenburg, AZ.

There were 4 of us in the vehicle and woke up from a nap early one night (about 10pm) to find it tracking along next to us.

My mind went through every iteration in the world of "what it could be" (full moon setting, etc.) but all 4 of us did witness, there was no denying! It was very similiar to accounts I have read about the "Foo Fighters" during WWII.

This thing tracked us for several miles, although I'm at a loss to remember how long. As we approached Wickenburg outskirts it seemed to join a group of orbs which were displaying jet propulsion tactics that were out of this world. Shooting straight up and down, sideways, all at astronomical speeds.

We pulled over along with about 20 other vehicles and stayed for several minutes watching them. But it had been a long drive that day and we were anxious to get home.

I fully expected to see an article in the morning newspaper. The whole incident had kind of a "War of the Worlds" kind of feel to it (and there were a lot of people there watching).

But I never saw a thing about it in the press. Perhaps there are others who still remember this summer day.

Interesting article! What are the "spinning suns" you mentioned? I googled the term but didn't get very far.

Another well-known instance of a ball-lightning-like phenomenon occurred, of all places,in a Little House on the Prairie book by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Of course, much of her stories were fictionalized, but it was such a weird interlude that I always figured it was true.

In my middle teens, I sometimes experienced waking at 3 a.m. or thereabouts to what sounded for all the world like: #1) someone performing a Riffle Shuffle of playing cards #2) one of our cats clawing and tearing a newspaper on the floor.

That "brrrrrrip!" sound is hard to put your finger on. My parents had a round table-top light dimmer switch that you plugged into a wall outlet and then plugged the lamp into the dimmer switch. It made a loud "click!" whenever you switched it on. The switch and lamp sat on an end table in the corner of our living room next to the sofa.

One night I awoke to that "brrrrrrip!" sound once again. Our bedroom had no door so I could look out through the foyer and hallway and see the far wall of our living room. "Click!" went the dimmer switch and slowly, ever so slowly, someone turned the dial atop the switch and the lamp went from the dull orange to brighter and brighter. It seemed to take forever and I strained to hear any other noise that might offer me a clue as to who was awake and why. My younger brother was asleep.

I stealthily hopped out of bed to find parents and cats fast asleep.

I was the only one awake in the house!

There were other nights that I awoke to that "brrrrrrip!" sound. Most often, nothing else would happen and I would eventually fall asleep. My most memorable experience was seeing doughnut-shaped colored lights crawling up the far wall of the living room that I could see from my bed. Like some silent psychedelic light show. Years later, I would read of an identical account of this "doughnut-shaped colored lights crawling up the wall at night" phenomenon.